Fun FUN fun!! :D

It's always a blast when the circus Alicia comes to town!!  This morning we got up about 8:00 ish and putzed around a bit trying to get going KNOWING that at 9am Shawn and her family would be arriving to visit!!  We kept telling each other "We should REALLY go and get dressed...." but at 9 am as Shawn and the gang drove up we were all in somewhat of a shambolic state! :D  We covered it pretty well I think!! :D

Alicia made Apple Cake ( Gluten free no less! ) for breakfast using the apples she had brought along and assorted ingredients remaining in my pantry! ;D  I DID break down and have Rex buy some real sugar though.. apparently having powdered sugar in your tea is less than satisfactory and the poor woman, she does LOVE her tea when she visits!! :D  LOL!!

Shawn and family stayed for an hour or so and got to visit, they hadn't met Alicia before so it was nice for them to put a face to the name!  The kids then all played outside in the balmy 64 degree winter day!!   Then at about 1:30 Jessica A's mother came to pick her up, then Mary came to get Charlotte.  We begged Mary to stay longer and visit with us and the kids played and played some more!!

We managed to make potato soup for dinner which was SO good and then we played some games with the place mats...(!!) We have presidents and states place mats so we played guess the VP, name the capitols etc...!!    The kids played and played some more and more and the babies ate and ate!  Now everyone is winding down, Millie is sleeping, Jack is refusing to go to bed ( meaning I left it too late... uh oh!! ) and Jess and Anna are playing Rock Star or something or other!!!

Flylady's mission today is Family Fun Day and I think we have THAT covered!!! :D

Night all! 'D

OMG WHAT a busy day !!!

We got up at 6 this morning to take Jack to Omaha to get his ears tested....  the doc said his ears look good... he has minor hearing loss but it's not enough to worry about!  After the hearing test we had a quick visit with Michele to drop of something for her, a quick stop at the mall for Rex then back to Lincoln for Chipotle for lunch.  After lunch we headed home after dropping Rex off at work and I started to get ready for the Bayer / Hrdlicka bunch's arrival....  !!  Mary arrived with Charlotte for a visit and Charlotte decided she would like to stay too!  The Bayer bunch arrived and there was much excitement and joy!  We managed to make dinner with rice, carrots and broccoli. ( I say we, I mean Alicia!!  She's awesome!)  Then Jessica's friend Jessica (!) called and said she would like to stay the night too....!!  So tonight we have Me, Hubby, Jessie, Jack, Millie, Alicia, Daryl, Victoria, Anna, Jack, Alex, Fiona, Charlotte and Jessica sleeping over !!!  It's a full house but we love it !! :D

I can't really type though as I'm chatting at the same time!!! :D

Still have to clear off my dresser this evening in order to get my Flylady mission today... it may have to wait until tomorrow!!

Night all!!

Hey there! :D

OMG I'm going to have to type so fast!!!  What a busy day and I've still got a bunch to do and we have to leave early in the morning to go to Omaha for an appointment and then when we get back we have to get the house ready for Alicia and her gang ( HUZZAH!!  it's been so LONG!!!) to come and Mary and Charlotte are coming too and I think Charlotte's going to stay too and ....... breeeeeathe..........!!!

LOL!!

Got a good night's sleep last night....  5 hours... not too bad!!  It's no 9 hours, but I'll TAKE it !! :D  Had a lovely time with the kiddoes, played our geography game again with a cunning twist from Jessie!!  Both kids did their Kahn academy math, Jack worked more on his number recognition.  He did some physics on an iPad game, I chatted on the phone with dear Uncle Weldon for a while and also had a brief chat with me Ma...!!  I did a couple of loads of laundry, made bread rolls for lunch and made a pasta bake and a fruit cobbler for dessert STILL without having had to buy any extra ingredients!!!  ( We are now OUT of white sugar and butter....!) ...  Now the kids are ALL sleeping, my Flylady chores are done ( today's mission... clear off the bedside table... looks lovely now! ) the spare room is made up for the tribe, and Jack's, Millie's and my clothes are all laid out and ready for morning.  The kitchen is a disaster area though, so I'm going to go and clean that up, pick up Millie's blankets and then maybe sit for half an hour and fall asleep watch TV!!

G'night!!  

9 hours sleep doesn't buy you as much as it used to!

Oh boy!!  I got NINE HOURS of sleep last night!!!  Ok.. I didn't get nine hours, Millie did, but that translates to me getting EIGHT FULL HOURS SLEEP!!!!!!  Oh MY!!!!!!!   Honestly when I woke up and looked at the clock I was dumbfounded!!!!  I felt like Cinderella when she wakes up in the morning and the bluebirds are twittering around her head and it's all peaceful and Vivaldi is playing the four seasons and and and .....   SCREEECH.....!!  Cue the sound of a needle scratching over a record ( oh god....  the Young 'uns won't have a clue what I'm talking about......)  anyhow.... today started off awesome and quickly slipped into insanity.  I feel like I should be sat here chuckling and looking sideways at the wall whilst sucking my fingers....   This house CAN be a bit of a nut farm once in a while.  It starts out simply enough... I might state the intention to put a basket of laundry in the washing machine.  No biggie, I'll do it after breakfast.... only ... breakfast never comes.... somebody wants something, then someone else wants something else... the dog wants out, the phone rings, a kid needs help pouring milk, another kid needs help with math, the baby cries, the dog wants back in, the phone rings again, kid with milk now needs help with bridge building, kid with math needs more help with math.  Baby wants me to pick up her blocks so she can throw them again... PHONE RINGS.......  Good grief!!  Somedays, MOST days the phone doesn't ring at all and I'm totally OK with that... today it was ringing off the wall !!  I didn't get the laundry IN the machine until 4 pm.  I brought it down with me when I got up at 8.

The kids and I had a fun day....  More French... this time.... "Can you speak more slowly please?"  and "Where are we on this map?"  LOL!  I LOVE how all our phrases demonstrate a COMPLETE lack of faith in our capabilities!!! :D  We also played Land the Plane on our US map.  I can't tell you or comprehend WHY the kids love this game so much!!  Jessie was LITERALLY jumping off the ground  with excitement to play it.  Barmy kid.

Insanity!

Absolute lunacy.

Genius!

And Millie quietly looks on!!

  Jack plays a game on the iPad called Bridge Odyssey or some such where he has to construct bridges to carry animals across yawning chasms.  He really enjoys it so I thought it might be fun for him to construct a real bridge from Tinker Toys from a chair to the table! It was great fun and Jessie and I joined him in building.... it was very hard to stay out of it really!!  What I liked best though was when Jack opened up the iPad and turned on the game so we would have Theme Music for our building!!!

Donkey Kong tries out the bridge! 

I finally got Jack signed up on Kahn Academy for Math so he can have his own page and I can keep a good track of how he's doing.  He started it today and they worked on number recognition using blocks and so on.  He really enjoyed that and kept wanting to do more and more and more!

We decided, since it was a whopping 34 degrees and sunshiney out, that a nice walk to the post office would be a lovely treat.  I have barely been outdoors in weeks!  We bundled up a bit, got the lead on the dog, fielded yet ANOTHER phone call and headed out!!  Brr... brisk out....  walk fast.....   YIKES the wind is COLD walk faster.....  RUN KIDS!!  RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!  SAVE YOUR SELVES!!!!..... Holy MOLY.  Next time I'll be sure to check the wind chill.....   Shudder.

We got home and warmed ourselves right back up with chocolate milk and a bit of Frasier....it was then that I got to the laundry and to putting on some rice for dinner!  We are STILL managing to eat from the pantry and had a really tasty dinner of rice with beans, onions and sausages !!!  Delicious!

The flylady task today was to clean off the tops of the door and windows in the bedroom!  Easy McPeasy.  Took me five minutes tops!  I like the quick ones!!  My friend April sent me a link to this app for the iPod called Carrot which is basically a To Do list with attitude!  I downloaded it and plugged in my chores.... so far I've made 100 points and I think I may have annoyed it! :D
We ended the day peacefully with me reading some of Treasure Island to Jack as he snuggled up in bed!

Yo Ho Ho.... mmm... RUM....!!! :D  Night all!!

Tuesday !! ;D ( sheesh, I had to write that three times!! Must be tired! )

So I changed the blog format.... you like?!!?

Today was excellent!  Started off screwy, I kept dropping things, I tried to make some folders on my iPad and was driven to the point of insanity by it...  I had Jessie help me... she rules!!

Later I had all the children sitting at the table trying to do school..... ahem...... Jessie was working on decimals through Khan academy, Jack and I were working on the iPad doing Math on the chalkboard app and Millie... well Millie was having a wonderful time throwing her toys, puking on things and squealing at the top of her lungs!!! ;D

Millie likes to eat the table.

Working hard!

Math master!

We did some more of our French language learning and all learned a new phrase... today's phrase was "Can you write it down for me please!!" ...  ( I see we have NO faith in our language abilities!)  and we played a game  about Europe to learn the countries.  Oh and we also learned a new card trick that wowed us no end.  We couldn't wait for Daddy to come home so we could show it to him!  We dramatically dealt out the cards, he picked his pile, we did all our hocus pocus....  drew out his card ....aaaaaaaand..... nope.  That wasn't it.  Shoot.  Tried again.... nope.  He was nonplussed.  Tsk.  Back to the computer and a recheck. Turns out I had stacked them wrong.  Doh!  Not so impressive that way!!  One more time and we got it right!  MUCH better!!!

I did all my Flylady chores PLUS I took down our bathroom curtains and washed, dried (IRONED) and put them back up! (I KNOW!!!!)  I did the Flylady mission which was to go through the sock drawer and weed out any that don't get used.  I did one better and went through my underwear, sock and nightwear drawer and threw out all sorts of unmentionables! :D  

For lunch we are still keeping to our using up the pantry plan so I made the kids white beans and bacon!  O. M. G.  it's sooo good!  I totally felt like a cowboy on the range or something but MAN that stuff is delicious! Filling too!!  For dessert I wanted to use up some canned organic pumpkin we have so I made pumpkin muffin donuts ( or something like that)  oh BOY they were good!  Once I made them I had to run to the bookmobile to return some movies and I instructed the kids not to even TOUCH them until I got back!  I had to race back home when it was discovered that I had forgotten to put a disk back in the box... so many times I have done that .....  Oh and when I was there, the library lady, Rebecca, told me that two of her stops were schools and of those two schools each had reported finding a dollar bill in their books!!!  (!!)  One lady said a little boy ( and I think they were kindergarden age) found a dollar.  His teacher is very sick and they have a collection fund for medical care for her.... he put his dollar in the collection!!!  I think that is freaking awesome!!!  I'm so thrilled that the little boy got a chance to pass it on....!  Wonderful wonderful!!  Aaaaaaanyhoooo.  I finally got home and we raced around to get everything set up... I put some laundry in to assuage any guilt, made a big cup of coffee, curled up on the couch with my baby and my muffin / donut thing and... yes.... an episode of Frasier!  What a treat!! :D

Oh!  And Millie slept for over 5 hours last night!!  Finally!!!  She had been consistently sleeping well for ages then suddenly she began waking every two hours or something.  I'd only need to nurse her for about 10 minutes or so, but still, waking up that frequently wasn't working for mama.   I couldn't think what was going on... I wasn't drinking caffeine... or alcohol...  just having one or two ( or SIX) dark chocolates every night before bed.  .....     oh.     yeah.    Dumb.

So, once I cut out the nightly chocs I got a good night's sleep.  TOTALLY WORTH IT !!!!

Fingers crossed for a repeat tonight!!

Oh oh oh and one MORE thing.... I got a call from the Funny Bone comedy club in Omaha today!  My name had been randomly pulled from their database to win four tickets to their comedy club this weekend to see Chris Rock's brother perform!!!  Hah!!!!  I told them we couldn't use them, but it was cool to win!!  :D

So...  yeah.... awesome day!!!

Monday..... Booooo!!! (now with PICTURES!)

***... sorry about all the alliteration!  Must be too much coffee.... though... it IS decaf....!!??***
****************************************************************************
Wow!  Mondays STINK!!  Even when I'm at home with the kids like every other day, for some reason, for us, Mondays are a big fat ppttthhhh.   Still!  Got lots done again!!!  Hee heee!!  I stripped my bed and washed the bedding... I didn't bother with Jack's this week as he is sleeping in a sleeping bag on top of his bed... don't ask... it's not an interesting story...!!  Jess decided she didn't want to wash her bedding.. so it was just mine and the wee one's!  Today's mission was to clean under the bed and since I'm a bit of a fuss pot about things being "UNDER" other things, there was nothing under our bed but piles of dust and hair.  Yum.  I got the vacuum out and took care of that tout suite!  I also did the usual Whole House cleaning stuff but just remembered I didn't do the windows.  Oh dear... !!  

We did lots of OTHER stuff today too!!   We learned some Fun French Frases... ( yes I know... PH, not F....)  The first one translates to "Does anyone here speak English?"!  It amuses me that this was the first phrase Jessie wanted to learn!! :D  We marched around the house chanting the phrase in rhythm!  It was a heap of fun!!!  ( Jack's phrase was "Where are the toilets?"  LOL!!! )  We learned a little about France, Jack drew the Eiffel Tower and the French Flag.  Jessie worked on Khan academy and editing her book.  Jack built a huge contraption out of Tinker Toys and did some phonics on a new program I downloaded for the iPad.  We watched some of the inauguration, learned a quote from Martin Luther King and watched Frasier over lunch! ( of course! )  

Oh... and it snowed.  Just an inch, but it looked pretty as it fell... lovely big fluffy flakes!  My favorite!! (alliteration alert!)

Oh and one more thing... I've decided to not buy any groceries this week and to only use food that is already in the house.  We have tons of stuff ( not tons LITERALLY, but A LOT ) that we seem to be storing...!  Dried beans, lentils, canned goods, rice... and yet week after week we buy in more food ( at great expense ) to add to the ever growing pile!!  NO MORE I say!!!  So today I made us beans and rice for lunch and cornbread to use up the cornmeal in the pantry!  The kids were ecstatic! Lunch was lovely and just what we needed with the snow and all!!

So anyway, I was in the mood to capture the moments so here ya go.... this happened today....

Cornbread on the couch! Comfy!

Tried to capture the big flakes... didn't....!

Jack's BIG contraption!

Nap time! :D 

Sunday..... renew your spirit day... ahhhhhhh!!!

That was a peaceful ahhhhhhh not a screaming AHHHHHHH!!!!

Today was lovely.  I had decided that in order to "renew my spirit" I was only going to do things For Me today.  Well of course and Millie.... I have to feed and change and play with and cuddle her, and of course for the kids, I have to make them lunch and pay some attention to them.... and of course for hubby, I have to make dinner and clean the kitchen and put Jack to bed but other than THAT I was only going to do things for me.  LOL!!!   Yeah.  I actually brought a book down to read today and realise now I haven't even cracked the spine!! ;D I still managed a fairly relaxed day though.  We lit a fire and watched a ton of Frasier, I played Words With Friends and took Jessie and Millie out to Michael's to buy new beads and string for Jessie to make bead things with.  We had a lovely dinner, ate a ton of chocolate, drank ample amounts of tea and coffee and generally just lazed about.  It was super. I sort of wish tomorrow was Sunday too!!  Even though we stay home and homeschool it does make a difference what day it is!  Hubby goes out to work, things need to get done in the house...  I can fight it all I like but I still have Things To Do!!

Anyway, I'm waffling on, so I'll go and spend a little more fireplace time before bed!!

See you tomorrow... where Flylady has us working in the Master Bedroom!  Oh boy! ;D